 The mind is abstract, it's expansive. The mind is not in the body. The mind isn't even the brain. There's all kinds of associations that the deceived mind is made. Thinking about the brain is where thinking takes place. The brain is just following, it's getting these impulses and it's getting directions from the mind. Where is the mind? The mind is just this vast, powerful, unlimited thing. And the body is like a teaching learning device. It just follows orders from the mind. So, that literally when we perceive problems as being, you know, someone did something to me or what do I got to do next? You know, we're still looking down, looking at the body in a sense like the body is autonomous. And like, it can make decisions on its own, it can think, it can do things, it can feel things. Psychology, I learned in physiology, you know, that the body has instincts, you know, the reflex instincts and hunger and thirst and warmth and sexual drives and everything. You know, I learned that the body had instincts and I get to page 52 of the course. Like, okay, get an opportunity to unlearn that. Jesus, the master psychologist, you know, in the 52 of the Old Text says that these body appetites are not in the body at all. That's the ego is literally working through the body to gratify itself. It's like, okay, now I've got to get back into my mind where the ego is. This thing is miscreating and is using the world for its purposes to keep me bound in time. And I've got to find out about how this ego works. I've got to find out about its thought system. So, I can disidentify from it or I can withdraw my investment in it. So, really, the key question is always what is it for? Because in the mind there is this thing called purpose. And the ego has a purpose and it's very bent on its purpose. It wants to reinforce the separation as being real. And it will use everything in the world, including the body, to reinforce the belief that the world is real and that the separation is happening. And the Holy Spirit's only purpose is forgiveness. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to look on all things to withdraw the attachment and the judgments of the world. And so, really, the deeper you go in the course, you start to get this thing of like, that question, what is it for? It starts to come up more and more and more. What is it for? When I'm making this phone call to this friend now, Jesus in the workbook says at the superficial level, you do think you understand purpose. You really think that when you're making a phone call that you're trying to reach another person or another body that's not in the proximity. It's like, I know what a phone's for. But he says then it's like, okay, then the next line is, he says, but there is no purpose at these levels. It's like, oh, it's just once again, I do not know what anything is for. Those kind of ideas that we think we know how things work in this world and what they're for. He says, you really don't know what you want to reach him for. See how he shifts from a phone is an object that you use to reach somebody who's not in your proximity, which is at the form level. And then he says, the real question is what do you want to reach him for? You know? That's a purpose thing. That brings it back. The mind has fragmented the world. It's like, when we go to work, we have a concept of us being like a worker and we have certain job duties to do. These are concepts and constructs. You know, sometimes the dilemma comes up, well, my boss says I need to do this and I don't know how I feel about this. I think this might be unethical or something. But the mind has all these constructs and what a good worker is, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be an American, what it means to be a member of Unity Charity. It just goes, the mind's got this storehouse of things in there, of constructs that tell it what the world means. When I go to the grocery store, there's a grocery store scenario tucked away. File number 1089, grocery store scenario. You go into a grocery store depending on your preferences, costs that got a high preference, find the bargains or freshness or health. We've got nutrition laws in there. Let's go through and health is a big thing. Finding the most nutrition. Finding control. All this stuff is fed into the computer. Maybe it's time. My time is precious. I've got to get in and out of this grocery store tonight by the 45 minutes. So that's my constraint. But anyway, it's this grocery store scenario in there. All the courses saying is, there's going to be these wonderful holy encounters that you're going to have and each person you meet in that grocery store gives you opportunity for salvation. Instead of running up and down the aisle like I used to, trying to get out of the store, it's like you get a sense of this purpose. There's a different purpose here. You can look people in the eye. Conversations get struck up. You feel a sense of connectedness. The old computer program in the mind of whatever it is starts to get laid aside and you start to feel that connection. And then you do it when you're doing your laundry. And you can do it when you're skiing. Or whatever. At the beginning, the Holy Spirit knows how much the mind believes in specific separate situations. He knows that the mind believes that time is linear. I did this yesterday. After I finish this today, I'm going here next. The mind's got like a script. It's got imagination. It's very linear. And purpose kind of gets away from that whole linear sense of time. It's very abstract too. It's like, hold one purpose in mind. At the beginning, it's like, what the heck is he talking about? What is this purpose? And we can't hold it in mind consistently because we've got all these other things and investments going on. But as soon as we learn to start to lay aside gradually these other scenarios and investments, then all of a sudden this purpose starts to dawn in our mind. It's like, yeah, this is what I want. There's a line in the Beyond All Idol section that says, whenever you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. That's a deep one. Whenever I decide about the form of what I want, I lose the understanding of its purpose. Whenever I read a meaning into any form and think I know what this chair is, or Jesus uses the example of the table in the workbook, he says, you can receive salvation from this table. You don't have to deal with ant so and so. I can do it with this table. This is pretty good. This is good news. And he says, now withdraw all the meaning that you've given to this table. He does it with a cup too. He says, do you really see a cup or are you just reviewing memories in your mind of how the cup feels on your lips or maybe of thinking of it as having coffee at breakfast in the morning? And what's the texture of the cup? Will the cup break if it falls? It's like we have all this information stored away on everything in the world and this is what makes a chair a chair we think and a cup a cup and a table a table. And he's saying there's a purpose that the Holy Spirit has for that table. You can get this universal purpose that he gives to the table and the cup and the chair and your aunt Frida or whoever, you know, then you've got it. But you really need to train your mind to this one abstract purpose. It's a different purpose than the ego's purpose in the mind. It's pretty, it's deep, you know, you can just get a glimmer of it like, hmm, sounds like something I want to try. There's a different purpose that can be given to anything. So what are you saying the purpose is? Are you saying atonement, tree, miracles, forgiveness? Yeah, lots of synonyms that he uses. To me, he comes at the same thing, come with all these different words and all these different things, but there's a lot of synonyms used in the course. In that sense, it's like one thing clicks, you know. All you have to do is just really get it clear, no matter what. For some people, the educational words come through, you know, curriculum and learning. Learning goal, you know, the real world is learned and the Holy relationship is a phenomenal learning accomplishment. Some people like the educational words. Some people like the religious words, you know, atonement. Or redemption. Or those kind of things, salvation. Some people like the psychological words, you know. It's just like whatever. He's just given us a tool that whatever you can relate to, and however you can get this meaning, you know, you can do it in an instant, but it just takes one perfect instant in the sense of, as we just talked about this purpose, is if we hold onto idols and investments, you can't simultaneously hold onto this purpose and those. So it's like a teeter totter, you know. It's like it all helps, but not to beat yourself up. When you're talking about feeling sacrificed about it, giving up the pleasures or whatever, you know, that comes up a lot in the course. But the thing is, if you look at the stages of the development of trust, you know, where it goes through the different levels, you know, and you go through, oh, here. And the second one in the third one is like, oh, you think you've come pretty far here. But the belief in sacrifice still clouded your vision. I mean, it's like you still, you've made some advances, you know, things you want and you don't want and everything, but it's like you still, the judgment is clouded. So obviously it's not until the very end, you know, as you really start to awaken, as you really start to let go, that you start to see the belief in sacrifice for what it is. So at the early stages, it's not uncommon at all to feel like, you know, that this is really a sacrifice. Because if we go back to our analogy of the mind, remember, of running from the light and running towards the form, to hide in the form, it's like it's sunk into the form. You know, in a sense, you know, it's like going into quicksand and then just trying to yank your leg out, you know. I mean, there's a pretty good grip. The learning of the world has got a pretty fast grip on the mind because it really believes in the concrete and the specific in the form. So to be real gentle and to say, okay, I'm going to go along. I'm just going to take it. I'm going to try to work with right now. I'm just going to try to watch my emotions. How do I feel right now? That takes a lot of vigilance, you know, when you're used to getting involved and distracted into things. And you know, before you know it, you've got a little irritation building up and it's a little stronger. And you don't notice it until, you know, boom, you've got a rage and you're ready to explode in somebody. It takes a lot of vigilance and practice just to watch your emotions and just to see how do I feel right now. Right now, in a sense, it is a lot because it's always right now. You know.